Retailers sharpen supply chain visibility with improved technology

To meet the challenge of rising e-commerce sales, businesses are pushing visibility beyond their own warehouses, to include suppliers, partners, and goods in transit. E-commerce as a proportion of total retail sales is growing fast, and that constantly changing landscape is forcing many retailers to seek tighter control over their inventory levels and deployment. In order to keep up with the quick fluctuations of online commerce, retailers need precise visibility over their goods at all times. Now, leading retailers have found a promising solution, as improved technology allows them to track every item in their inventory, whether it sits in their own warehouse, in a supplier’s factory, in a partner’s DC, or even in a tractor-trailer or shipping container. This level of precise visibility leverages improvements in computing, sensors, storage, and big data. The result is important to retailers because it allows them for the first time to react to changing market conditions in near real time. VISIBILITY IS CRUCIAL IN E-COMMERCE Although U.S. e-commerce sales in 2015 accounted for just 7.3 percent of the nation’s total retail sales, that picture is changing fast, U.S. Census figures show . E-commerce sales grew 14.6 percent over 2014’s figures, to $341.7 billion, compared with growth of just 1.4 percent for total retail sales. Much of the pressure to improve visibility throughout the supply chain comes from that explosive growth of e-commerce, which is more sensitive to market fluctuations than traditional in-store sales. Online markets can explode or collapse seemingly overnight in response to triggers like weather, fashion, current events, or social media. Supply chain visibility is one of the crucial capabilities a company must master in order to respond to those swiftly changing conditions, according to “Keeping Up with the Retail Consumer: 6 Supply Chain Disciplines Retailers Must Master,” a 2015 […]